[zinnia]

Reading Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, which tells the story of Richard Hoagland and his struggle to get his analysis of certain structures on Mars and on the dark side of the Moon taken seriously.

He bases a large part of his analysis on tetrahedral geometry, which is an interesting use of triangular and pyramid structures found in various places in the Solar System that seem too regular to be accidental expressions of normal planet-forming activity.

It is a very interesting book, even though there are many obvious flaws in Hoagland's reasoning.

One is tempted to believe "something" is there and one wishes that Hoagland spent less time trying to make people see exactly what he saw and more time just looking. But, to be fair, Hoagland's biggest and most important argument is that NASA has not been generous with the images and research time needed to properly investigate them.

The book does not offer rational alternatives to Hoagland's insistence that the structures seen on Mars represent artifacts created by conscious beings, but anyone who has ever spent much time looking at natural crystals and other formations right here on earth knows that many natural structures look highly artificial because they carry repeated angles and straight edges or because they resemble faces and human figures. In fact these very structures are often cited by people as proof that there is a Gaian conscious intelligence at work, or a conscious Creator/Designer.

I am not a scientist, I am an artist. I am comfortable looking at what is there without having any answer as to what it is.

Russians share with Americans a dynamic fascination and a nationally-supported desire to explore Space. What are some Russian opinions of the images that Hoagland and his colleagues claim stand as "proof" of an older civilization on Mars and the Moon?